In a wildly unexpected move, Wizards decided to drop the entirety of the Foundations Jumpstart set yesterday. That’s right: you can check out the full set on the card image gallery right now. While this does avoid Wizards needing to run two spoiler seasons simultaneously, it also gives us a ton of new cards to evaluate all at once. Some of which, inevitably, will slip through the cracks. Neerdiv, Devious Diver, for example, is a new MTG Commander powerhouse that’s easy to overlook. It also hearkens back to some flavor text from a whopping 17 years ago.
Neerdiv, Devious Diver MTG
- Mana Value: 2U
- Rarity: Rare
- Stats: 2/2
- Card Text: Whenever Neerdiv, Devious Diver becomes tapped, target player mills cards equal to its power. Whenever you cast a spell from your graveyard or activate an ability of a card in your graveyard, draw a card and put a +1/+1 counter on Neerdiv.
On the surface, Neerdiv, Devious Diver looks like a reasonable card. It can mill you when attacking, thus giving you fuel in the graveyard to power her card draw and growth ability. Simple, fair stuff. Both of Neerdiv’s abilities also have the potential to be absolutely broken in half given the right support, however.
Most of said brokenness can be found in Neerdiv’s second ability. It’s incredibly open-ended, triggering off of casts and activations from your graveyard. It also, crucially, lacks the ‘once per turn’ clause we’ve come to expect from abilities like this. This means you can easily go infinite with the right combo pieces, creating a huge Neerdiv and drawing your entire deck.
Don’t underestimate the mill ability here, either. It triggers whenever Neerdiv becomes tapped by any means, not just by attacking. There are plenty of ways to repeatedly tap and untap a creature in Magic, which will let you grind through your opponents’ decks or fill your own with valuable fuel.
On top of all of that, Neerdiv also has two very relevant creature types. Both Merfolk and Rogues have plenty of support, particularly in Commander. These are also types that have decent synergy with self-mill and graveyard interactions, which means a typal build is definitely possible if that’s the direction you want to go in.
Before we get into some specific synergies for the card, here’s a quick fun fact about Neerdiv. Just like Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar from Modern Horizons 2, Neerdiv is a character who has appeared in flavor text in the past. In Neerdiv’s case they were mentioned on Lorwyn’s Forced Fruition, a staggering 17 years ago. A serious MTG lore deep cut, by anyone’s standards.
A Long-Awaited Graveyard Engine
So how can you go about breaking Neerdiv in half? Well, there are a number of options. If you’re planning to abuse that second ability, you’ll most likely need to run black. This means playing a Dimir Commander and running Neerdiv in the 99. There are plenty of synergistic options for this, including Araumi of the Dead Tide and Narfi, Betrayer King. Araumi is even a Merfolk, too.
Once you’ve set up your chain of command, you can go about slamming some black graveyard staples. Both Gravecrawler and Reassembling Skeleton are classics that work incredibly well with Neerdiv. Doubly so if you get a Phyrexian Altar or Warren Soultrader involved. You can loop these two cards from your graveyard easily, stacking counters on Neerdiv and cards in your hand.
From there, you have multiple avenues to victory. You can take the effective, if boring, Thassa’s Oracle route once you’ve drawn your whole deck. Alternatively, you can sneak a massive Neerdiv through for damage with a Rogue’s Passage, or Fling it if you’re playing Grixis. If you like the graveyard aspect of Neerdiv but have no interest in infinite combos, then you’ll want to keep things fair with plenty of Flashback and Jumpstart spells instead. While less explosive, a deck built around these mechanics could be built in Mono-Blue, which will let you run Neerdiv as your Commander.
Speaking of Mono-Blue, you can also heavily abuse Neerdiv’s mill effect without going outside of that. Freed From the Real is a classic tap/untap engine if you can get infinite mana going. Throw in a Paradise Mantle, and you won’t even need an additional engine. Milling the whole table out with a combo like this won’t win you friends, but it just might win you prizes.
